TS Eliot Wasteland

The main thing that really stuck out to me in The Waste Land is the fifth line in part one, The Burial of the Dead.  "Winter kept us warm, covering".  However, this line really confuses me.  How can winter keep us warm?  The other things that really confuse me are the shifting characters, tones, and scenes.

~Commented on Daniel's post

Fevered Ramblings

The best-and only- way I am able to describe the poem that is The Wasteland is this: it is the poetry one can create when his or her sanity is gone. With the number of shifting scenes and multiple characters, along with the focus on certain sounds that lead one to a different location than where they were previously are, for me, signs of madness. The seeming randomness of this poem could have only been formulated while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs or while in a fever dream or perhaps even while actually lacking a composed sanity. It is incredible to see these ramblings form some measure of narrative and characters for a moment, only to be ripped away to another scene with new places and new characters to follow. It even goes as far to jump through time, it is so ludicrous, going from London to Carthage and to who knows where else! The insanity of this poem is remarkable and if T.S Eliot were alive today, I would find a way to speak with him and ask him, "How on Earth did you write this?" and "What is it about?"

Commented on Tyler's Post.

Prufrock

This poem was not very enjoyable to read because Prufrock is so indecisive. He refuses to act and continues making excuses that he should not “dare disturb the universe,” and that he is not sure “how [he] should begin.” His indecisiveness and refusal to confront life and the problems it presents is rather annoying and not admirable. I have not been able to figure out the purpose of why he repeatedly mentions “yellow fog/smoke,” or why he chooses to compare it to actions of a cat.

 

I commented on Jessica Week's post!

Prufrock

His objective is to speak of the progression of the desired love affair, and its eventual.  Progression is the key word, without, in this case, a good connotation: "I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker."  Prufrock laments the fact that he has moved beyond a point of adequacy, and therein lies the major shift.  The next two stanzas speak hypothetically: "would it have been worth it, after all..?" he asks.

No, because that time has passed.  He cannot now go to her and confess his love, to woo her, because he would be as "Lazarus, come from the dead."  He has reached a kind of end, an ultimate point.


Darby

Time

Time is a theme in this poem mentioned over and over again. In the fourth stanza time is mentioned seven times. Eliot says, "time yet for a hundred indecisions,/ and for a hundred visions and revisions". He's so obsessed with time, yet it seems as though he wastes it. "And in short, I was afraid/ and would it have been worth it after all". He never takes action, therefore; Prufrock is left in a constant state of contemplation of time. He goes through his days and they're quite boring actually. To me, the poem comes across as that he is going about day to day things too scared to act when he says things like "do I dare", but he never does he says because he's too afraid. It's a poem of regret maybe, as he is aging. I get this idea from when he talks about going bald. Still not sure how mermaids fit into this.

(If this looks weird I had to type it on my phone)

I commented on Caleb's post.

The Love Song (?) of J. Alfred Prufrock

I had to read through this poem a few times to come to a conclusion as to what it might be about. I understood it to be about a man who has dreamed about all of these mystical things all of his life, yet has seemingly lead a normal, mundane life – as he says, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” At the start of the poem, he seems almost hopeful to facing life with his lover. He says, “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.” As the poem progresses, however, he begins to lose his youth. His hair is falling out, his muscles are shrinking, and his dreams are dying. He looks back at his life, reminiscing about the many wonderful things he experienced, but also realizing that his youth is gone. He seems to be having a sort of mid-life crisis, pondering what he is to do with his life now. He continues to dream until, as he says, “human voices wake us, and we drown.”

After analyzing this poem, I have to ask, where is the “Love Song” part? Maybe it’s just not love as we would think?

I commented on Nathanael Carroll's post.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

In my opinion, I think that Prufrock is just expecting too much when he thinks about love. He doesn't know what love actually is. He is consumed about his outside appearance and about the things that could go wrong instead of how his date could actually go. So, by doing all of this he is a man filled with anxious thoughts and it paralyzes him.

I commented on Jessica Weeks blog.

The yellow fog

Eliot writes of a fog, a fog that surrounds a person like a cat constantly wanting attention. A fog that does not let Prufrock forget that there is a time for everything. A fog that is always making him question if anything is even worth it. It eats away at him causing fears and doubts. But how does the woman he loves play into all of this? Throughout the poem he clearly speaks of his indecisiveness that this fog surrounds him with, but this woman I find hard to see the connection with. In the end it seems he dies with all his questions, never finding the answer.

P.S. I commented on Ray's post.

The Misleading Title

From a first glance at the title of this poem,  one can perceive that it has to do with love or being in love yet that is defiantly not the case for poor Mr. J. Alfred Prufrock.  This poem is about the consequences of avoiding life's big questions. Prufrock spends half the poem going on and on about how much time he has until he is finally confronted and uses the "time to turn back and descend the stair." He is indecisive throughout the poem and tries to make up for it with self-loathing. Eventually, his time has passed and is stuck thinking " would have it been worth while?" 
I learned from Prufrock's cowardliness to take risks and disturb the universe! Our time as young adults are to live boldly and  loudly yet still being pre-cautious of the time we are granted and preparing for the future.  We cannot waste our youth and our dreams of wanting to   "murder and create" because there is time  "for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions." We can make a choice and change it because the opportunities are at a multitude, yet we cannot catch ourselves looking back over the four to eight years of college and wondering did we use that time wisely to move forward in life.  If we avoid preparation and making the choices of major, career, etc. we panic like Prufrock begins to do once he realizes that he is old. Our lives are a small dot on the infinite timeline and we never know when our time will run out so each day we must make it count.  

I commented on Ray's blog post.  

A Love for Living Hell

        In the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot seems to paint a picture of a man (Prufrock) full of indecision and pain, especially in the midst of change. This man is in a sort of daydream, contemplating decisions, revisions, plans, digressions from those plans, bygone days, and love for the idea of peace. The quote from Dante's Inferno placed as a preface to the lyric provides a perception of this man's inmost opinion of his thoughts; it is a personal Hell. In light of this, why is this poem entitled "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"? If it is about a personal Hell, should it not be at least written as a sort of eulogy? Prufrock's flashbacks of biowarfare ("yellow gas") and his reference to sleeping troubles point to a participation in World War I and thus a change in perception. This man lost his innocence, his love for the golden age (Michelangelo), his care for life. He cannot see the world the same. He is deeply troubled and cannot make even the slightest decision without doubting the purpose. Why is this considered a love song? Perhaps this Prufrock fellow, though tortured by his thoughts, also loves this process of doubt and pain in meditation. He loves to zone out and think, even though it is torture. His relationship with his thoughts are as a wife's relationship with a verbally abusive husband whom she still loves. Though there is such pain, there is still satisfaction occasionally due to deep love. This is why at the end, as his thought process is broken by conversation, he "drowns." His contemplation is interrupted, and thus, his past innocence dies once more, only to be remembered in his next meditation. This man, though changed, remembers innocence, remembers morality, remembers hope. It is his refuge in the midst of change. This is not a typical love lyric, written to a lover; it is written as a celebration and love for contemplation and remembrance.

P.S. I commented on Caleb Zessin's post.

Why Love Song?

I initially had a problem with this being entitled a love song. Where is the love? Where? Well. It's in the use of lyric. It's a poem. As Dr. Schuler said, people use poetry when they're in love. So what's our voice in love with? I believe this poem his swan song, his eulogy, his ode to the Golden Age. The essence of whimsy that belongs to the romanticized past. He's using a lot of imagery that seems to be taken from war time. e. g. Yellow fog. And I think he's using that to mourn what the war ripped him from. Literarily speaking, we've left behind the romantic transcendentals. "Go forth and commune with nature." In world war 1 nature and humanity committed irreparable crimes against each other. The last image we have is that of a mermaid. Connected through the imagery of combing. (Hair vs wave crests) Mermaids are half-human, half-nature. His inclusion of them randomly at the end shows his envy of those oblivious to the true crimes he is experiencing. When he speaks of the women talking of Michelangelo, it comes across disdainfully. Women couldn't fight in the war. They know we lost our golden ages past. But they didn't see it ripped away from humanity by trenches and biological warfare. He hates their oblivion but he wants it desperately for himself. Don't wake him from his journeys with the sea maidens. They're the only thing that help him sleep at night.

I commented on Abbie George's post.

The anxiety of a man in love

Something that I thought was interesting in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was just that Prufrock is supposed to be a respectable, smart man but when he is in love with this woman, he loses his calmness and command of his thoughts. He becomes anxious and nervous, as if he's a young, immature boy who has a crush on a girl. I just find this funny because when I think of men of Prufrock's status (or at least of the status I picture him to be), I see them as being calm and collected all of the time, but even for a man like Prufrock, love shakes him and takes him to an uncomfortable and awkward place.

I commented on Abbie George's post.

Elliot poems

These poems were definitely darker than what we read last semester. Elliot is dark, but his poems are just as deep as Wordsworth and all the others we read. A lot of his work is confusing as to what point he is trying to get across, but at the same time he is painting a picture with his words. My two favorite were the Love Story and the poem about time. He speaks so much truth in these two poems. It almost seems as if he wrote them about me. I look forward to looking at these in class and dissecting them to find out their true meanings!


I commented on Brannen's.

Death, Winter, City, Time

"Death. Winter. City. Time"

These were the words that I scribbled on several different pages of the packet we recieved of "The Waste Land." At first reading, this poem frustrated me greatly. I couldn't form coherent thoughts in regards to the events of the poem. I couldn't make sense of anything. Yet while filled with confusion about specifics, I found myself writing these words.

I didn't have to understand precisely what events were transpiring in the speaker's life, whether it was literal or metaphorical, what religious or historical significance it held... none of those details caused me to feel the way I felt as I read Eliot's work.

I got the point without fully understanding the work. I experienced the lull of death in each word. I could feel the cold winter and hear the sounds of the city. I sensed the time passing. I felt what he intended me to feel.

So in the end, I did enjoy this poem. Anxious to gain more understanding as we discuss tomorrow!

P.S. Commented on Brannen's post!

Drowning in Time

       I have pondered on T. S. Eliot’s poem this weekend trying to grasp the meaning of it. After research and rereads I have concluded that Elliot is is expressing time and how we spend most of it doing the same thing and then before we know it, it is gone. We get into ruts in our life that we, as Eliot puts it, “have measured out [our] life with coffee spoons.” Our lives get into deep routines of doing the same thing everyday that we let time slip past and then we are only left with the dreams of what could have been. 

This is the stage Eliot is in because he begins to ask “would it have been worth it,” as he looks back on all the chances he passed up on. As he sits in regret he begins fantasizing of all the things that could have been and if they would have been worth going for. At the end he accepts that he is in a routine of imaging the “could have beens” and concludes with “till human voices wake us, and we drown.” Suggesting that in the end, it is always too late to change and we drown.

P.S. I commented on Brannen's

Love's Bedazzlement

The Love Song is a wonderful portrayal of young lovers going about an enjoying time together. It was a joy to see, in the beginning of the poem, that the lovers didn't want to go to the typical lovers' lanes and strolling place, nor stay in and go nowhere, but rather they want to go out and explore, go to places most wouldn't go, and experience those places while in each other's company. Also, the daring of these two, particularly of the male, having the confidence to go out without worrying so much about his looks, as it says he is balding in the middle of his head. However, he does go out to be with his love as being with the one he loves is more important to him than his appearance. The love these two feel for each other is a beautiful thing to read.

Dreaming

     I've read through this poem a couple of times savoring it. Eliot's imagery sparked my imagination. During my first reading, I believed this poem to simply be beautiful, but there is so much more.
     In the beginning Eliot keeps mentioning time. "And indeed there will be time..." The word time is used eleven times throughout this poem. In the beginning there is time. Time to do whatever he wants. Isn't it that the way with us? We are just starting out. We have time to visit London, read a book series, find love, break hearts. Or perhaps some will go the darker route of life - Eliot does mention murder. We have time to make mistakes, second guess, waste. However, just like in this poem, time flies by.
     Before he knows it, he is balding and aging. We are all told college is over before we know it. That we'll blink our eyes and we'll be forty, married with 2.5 kids. Through this poem Eliot is realizing the same thing, and soon he is asking "would it have been". Personally, this question pops in my head quite a bit. The what if's of life... Then Eliot is at the beach after much time has passed, and I love the last line, "Till human voices wake us, and we drown."
    He is dreaming of mermaids, just as earlier, he was dreaming of what to do with his life. I am a dreamer. I dream of all the possibilities this world and my God have to offer. Doctor, author, teacher, missionary, parent, wife, single-pringle, books, Paris, London, New York, Uganda, and do not get me started on books. Life seems forever long and our possibilities endless. However, life is a vapor, and Eliot is illustrating that. It can be slightly nerve-racking. I've experienced that too many times, but my God is an amazing author. I trust the plan He has written out for me, and I trust it is going to be amazing. Just got to take it one step at a time...

P.S. I commented on Griff's!

Rough Brush Strokes

One thing that really struck me about The Waste Land was the way Elliot used such bold and sometimes abrasive strokes to paint his pictures. While the words themselves are pretty cryptic, the sensations, feelings, and actions one experiences while reading the poem are quite clear. I'll be quite interested to discuss the poem in class tomorrow, because while being confused, I am also intrigued. After coming out of last semester's poems of Wordsworth and Blake, this writing style is really a shock. The earlier poets seemed to handle their subjects delicately as though they would break easily. I wonder if Elliot's subjection to the chaos of the world at the time caused this sort of handling of his subjects. The world was a much harder place, and even the subjects held dearly were held tightly. Much more tightly than those delicately handled objects of the romantics.